Bleeding Star
by crackinthecup
Summary: On the eve of his departure from Ost-in-Edhil, Annatar offers Celebrimbor one more gift. Silverfisting.


"Where are you going?" Celebrimbor poured himself another glass of wine and returned to stalk about the hearth. The nonchalance tacked to his words tasted rusty, like copper—or blood; he clenched his jaw against the hollowness, propping his elbow upon the mantelpiece, stabbing his gaze into Annatar's turned back.

Annatar's hands stilled for one dusty second in their rummaging among the belongings strewn across his bed. And then he curled his fingers around an elegant box of carven wood jangling with earrings—gifts, all of them had been gifts—and with a sigh he murmured, "Away."

The tiny dips and ridges of the metal goblet pressed reddened furrows into Celebrimbor's palm as his grip tightened. "We need you here, Annatar."

"I shall return, my lord," Annatar purred through the smile smeared across his lips; a smile Celebrimbor did not see.

"When?"

"That remains to be decided."

Celebrimbor scoffed in hopes of trammeling this ratcheting, gutting, _stupid_ unease. Annatar had every right to come and go as he pleased. A guest, not some chattel to be ordered and fettered. Of course. ( _He refused to think of what might befall if ever he attempted to pursue such recourse; refused to think of the inevitable failure, the shackles re-forged around his own limbs instead._ ) But emotion still welled hot in his chest; it coated his ribs and dripped poison into the pit of his stomach. Annatar was needed _here_. The least he could do was not go gallivanting across the trackless miles of the world almost without notice after his people had folded him within their midst, after they had all ladled out so much trust. The surge of indignation was easy, natural, and it was this he chose to ride.

"Knowledge unfathomed," he enunciated, he mused, and pretended he was not watching Annatar to absorb his reaction. "That is what you have promised."

"And have I not been true to my word?" Annatar countered mildly, still busying himself with his trinkets.

"Hardly unfathomed," Celebrimbor snorted, and wished his words barbed; wished that they would embed and cut and hurt, as so much tripping off Annatar's silvered tongue had done to him in turn. "With patience, with time, my people would have developed as much, if not more."

"You would advocate patience, my lord, when you yourself have none to muster?"

"You are needed within these halls, Annatar, to aid these people, not traipsing across Arda!"

The creature trilled a laugh upon the air. " _You_ need me, Tyelpë." And at last he deigned to turn, as golden, as radiant, as ever, and Celebrimbor found no words to dash his jibe to the stones beneath his feet. Annatar advanced, he glided, and bare breathless inches from Celebrimbor he stopped. Within his palm he cupped Celebrimbor's cheek, a caress of warm flesh and the gleaming coolness of his rings. "Is it not so?"

Beneath the familiar touch of those fingers a flush heated in greeting. But Celebrimbor clung to his silence; with no affirmation would he grace Annatar's question—he was the one leaving and in no position to make inquiries. He quashed the instinct to lean his cheek into Annatar's palm, to close his eyes and breathe him in, yet he could do nothing at all to stopper the searing, swooping prickle between his hipbones at the lascivious smile glimmering on Annatar's lips.

"I may be gone a long time," Annatar whispered, pressing himself impossibly close. Nimble fingers plucked Celebrimbor's circlet off his brow, cast it clattering onto the table—Annatar did not even watch its fall; slid into his hair, tugged and freed, braids loosening to pool about his shoulders. The Maia reached up, leaned in, and a curl of hair found its winding way onto his finger; he jerked, the contours of his lips a sizzling ghost against Celebrimbor's own. "Would you not ask a farewell gift of me?"

Celebrimbor lunged forward, yet the kiss was thwarted; Annatar flashed back, finger tapping against the elf's lips, and his teeth glimmered through the smile he threw at Celebrimbor.

"Patience, my lord."

The front of his tunic was scrunched up in Annatar's fists as the creature dragged him forward, and willingly, half-drunk with wine and lust, Celebrimbor went. At the foot of the bed Annatar whipped round so fast that Celebrimbor's stomach churned with the sickening momentum, and upon the sheets he was unceremoniously shoved. With undulating grace Annatar straddled his hips, and the whoosh of breath hurrying out of his lungs could not rightly be blamed on the impact alone. Warm fingers skated toward his wrists in fleeting, ticklish touches, and before Celebrimbor could think of mounting a protest, there the fingers clenched. His arms were forced above his head and fitted to the bedpost, and with a length of rope Annatar snaked out of some inner pocket of his robes, utterly immobilized. Celebrimbor watched as Annatar tightened the knots: the rope chafed, discomfort prickled across his skin as he yanked at his bonds, but they would not give an inch.

"Do you make a habit of walking around with rope in your pockets?"

"No," Annatar breathed, leaning down to touch their lips together; he withdrew before Celebrimbor could crane his neck to deepen the kiss. "It is especially for you, my beauty."

Seemingly in eagerness Annatar's lips parted, and for one viscous moment he rocked, he pressed down against Celebrimbor's loins—and then he slithered off and resumed packing.

"Annatar, what—"

"I leave with the dawn, Tyelpë, and my belongings will not pack themselves."

"At least let me go." Celebrimbor twisted, decidedly ignoring his cock as it twitched traitorously between his legs, and more resolutely he slammed his wrists against the coiling tongue of rope; but still it would not budge.

Annatar allowed a few moments to scurry past; allowed the ridiculous _hope_ in the elf's eyes to clot. It was almost too easy: "No." He modulated it like the sting of a riding crop; and oh, it goaded Celebrimbor into such delicious writhing that the Maia almost stilled to watch. Almost. Instead he hefted up a tunic and trailed a critical eye over it; he folded the garment and worked it into his duffle bag; he stretched out a hand for another.

"Annatar—" His name hissed out from between Celebrimbor's teeth as a command.

A tightening of the lips, a narrowing of the eyes. The creature moved, he undulated, he crawled once more atop Celebrimbor. With maddening brushes of his finger-pads against feverish skin, he unclasped Celebrimbor's tunic, unfastened his breeches, and left his front bare in the oily shadows gutted by the candlelight. A hand reached, golden hair rippled, and Annatar wrenched a slender red candle out of its holder upon the bedside table.

The first drop of scorching wax splattered just above the elf's navel.

"Fuck—" Celebrimbor sputtered, he gasped, he careened away from the flaming tendrils of pain radiating through his skin. He made another desperate attempt to free his hands—in vain. The flare of agony gradually dwindled into a tingle as the burning blob of wax cooled into solidity, a cracked, weeping mass of crimson. "Fuck, Annatar, don't—"

The next bled down his sternum. A groan ripped from him, shocking the room into silence, eliciting a darkness mangled into a smirk across Annatar's face. He arched into the rawness of the sensation, stabbing his nails into his palms, and inadvertently canted his hips upward to rub against the Maia's stiffening length; that unholy smile widened. Random Annatar's trail of wax seemed. Each droplet chiseled Celebrimbor's skin into a blazing point of agony; his nipples were stiffened in distress underneath their peak of compact wax; a constant throbbing pulse whined through his flesh as the flame of each drop wavered and faltered, slowly, oh so slowly. Each fresh splash of wax prodded from Celebrimbor a swiftly aborted movement, a shift in position, a lurch of the flesh away from such abuse, and beneath its coat of vermilion his skin was pulled into a grueling pinch.

Long, searing minutes had elapsed before Annatar stopped, before the candle was snuffed into a stump between his fingers. "Would you like a mirror?"

As if through a bubbling puddle the question struggled. Celebrimbor blinked, he weaned his lips from inchoate, senseless sounds. "A mirror? For what?"

A smile, a flicker of golden eyes to his front, and his own gaze slipped downward to follow. And then he froze. The Star of Fëanor splayed upon his chest in crimson hunks of wax and harrowed flesh.

" _Eru_ —what have you done?"

A grin now, all secrets and too-sharp incisors. "A gift, Tyelpë. Do you not like it?" the creature cooed as with tiny insidious motions he wriggled his hips down over the elf's tentative erection to sit astride his thighs; and whatever Celebrimbor had meant to say—the wrongness roiling in his gut, still, _still_ , the shameful swirl of need low in his belly—finally whooshed out of him in a guttural groan.

Annatar shrugged off his outer robes and with deft fingers plucked at the lacings of his breeches. One hand he steadied on Celebrimbor's hip, the other he plunged lower still to close about his own length. A few lazy strokes brought him to full hardness. The pain had ebbed into reddened patches of skin splotched outward from the star like some ghastly, bleeding glow, and now with glazed eyes, with renewed lust lulling his thoughts, Celebrimbor drank him in. Warm desire flooded his nethers, and in it he melted, he squirmed in unfulfilled expectation—the star splintered—a wince was nailed to his features as wax unstuck. Annatar's eyes slipped shut, head tipping back with a spill of golden hair, and into his own fist he rocked his hips.

"Whom are you thinking of?" Celebrimbor queried in low, husky tones that seemed to struggle to entrap playfulness; he got the distinct impression that it was not him, and that knowledge heaved sickeningly in his gut. Fluidly Annatar stooped, and removing his hand, he pressed his fingers against Celebrimbor's lips. The elf opened his mouth, a dart of the tongue, and Annatar pressed harder.

"Do you want me to gag you, sweetling?"

A shake of the head.

"Oh, but I believe you do."

"Who is it?" Celebrimbor wheedled, he beseeched, lips forming the words against the Maia's fingers; he fixated on the subtle peril taut in the lines of Annatar's body, trying, _needing_ to prod it into explosion. "Has a lady caught your eye during your garden strolls?"

A breathless laugh, strangely harsh, strangely warm to Celebrimbor's ears, like the song of glowing steel upon the anvil. "It is no lady, I assure you."

"Then who— _ah_ … Annatar, you're distracting me." A breathy, faraway sound fluttered in Celebrimbor's voice as the Maia continued ghosting a finger up his length; mapping the veins there, probing at the wetness pooled about the slit.

"Are you averse to being distracted?" And suddenly Annatar took him in hand and stroked, slow, brutal passes of the hand that had Celebrimbor keening, head thrown back, hair a tangle upon the pillow. The star cracked, crumbled further, and a drizzle of crimson flecks of wax dotted the black sheets.

"Yes, oh _yes_ , like that," Celebrimbor whispered, half to himself.

Annatar smirked. "I'll take that as a no."

And just as abruptly as it had begun, the contact ceased. With a groan cloying upon the air, Celebrimbor snapped his hips upward into the empty space left by Annatar's hand, and in unforgiving reprimand Annatar's palm fell with a heavy, ringing smack upon his inner thigh. The elf gasped, thrashing, trying to shimmy away, yet a devious light pierced through the gold of Annatar's eyes and he jabbed his fingers into the reddened imprint of his own palm. Celebrimbor twitched with the new blossom of pain, and almost in glee Annatar held that pressure.

"What have I said about patience, my lord?"

"What has your Valar-damned patience to do with this?" Celebrimbor snarled in return, absolutely, irrevocably, regrettably quivering beneath each meager, hurting touch of Annatar's fingers.

Annatar leaned in, hair tumbling about them both to momentarily percolate the candlelight into fitful flickers, and with a maddening gust of breath against Celebrimbor's lips he whispered his answer: "Everything."

With that he surged backward to rest once more in Celebrimbor's lap. His nails scratched at the exposed neck, past bobbing cartilage as the elf swallowed, jarring against his collarbone, and inches above the topmost ray of the star both his hands caressed to a halt.

Gold flashed up to silver; silver that should have been panic-addled a moment earlier, for with such a cruel tilt to his lips did Annatar smile, so viciously did his nails burrow into Celebrimbor's chest, that he should have known, should have realized …

"Wait, _no_ —"

Annatar plowed down over Celebrimbor's chest, over his abdomen, dislodging the wax into snapping, splintering fragments that had Celebrimbor loosing his protest into a howl; that had him panting, sucking in gulping, tremulous breaths, and for a while Annatar tired of paying attention to the sniveling elf-lord and instead assessed his handiwork: the ruin upon Celebrimbor's front, the seeming massacre. Crimson was battered into his dark skin from how savagely the wax had been ripped off, and crimson too sluiced in flakes of wax onto the bedspread. And Annatar sat back and smiled. How fitting, he deemed it. How _poetic_.

Celebrimbor's erection had flagged and Annatar did not bother stroking arousal back into his body. Instead his fingers curled into a loose fist about his own length; he let Celebrimbor watch and whimper and plead, and thought of another's touch, far too long ago. He thought of blackened fingers as he expertly pumped his own up and down his cock. And he thought of other times too, when those fingers had pinned him down, all open and oh so ready for the taking.

Annatar came with a moan that echoed of far more relish than Celebrimbor was used to hearing, spraying his seed over the clinging, broken star on the elf's chest. Then he did up his lacings and made to move away.

"Annatar, _please_ ..."

"Please what?"

Celebrimbor whined wordlessly, straining against the rope still shackling him to the bedpost.

"Do you want me to make you come, my lord?" Annatar spat with disgust worming into his voice. "Are you so desperate as to beg for my touch? Would you degrade yourself so? You, the last scion of the House of Fëanáro?" He spied the color seeping into Celebrimbor's cheeks, the wrathful scintilla in his silver eyes, and with false sweetness he added: "As you wish, my lord."

He brought Celebrimbor off with a careless hand; too light, too erratic. The darts readied upon Celebrimbor's tongue, the rightful _fury_ , were swallowed back down to needle his heart, like so many times in the past; his sharp intake of breath at the telltale tightening of muscles propelled them backward. He tripped past his climax with a poorly stifled scream, and onto his soiled front his seed mingled with Annatar's own and the minced remnants of wax.

He kept his eyes closed as Annatar's fingers languidly dipped into the straggling, sordid pool rapidly drying on his abdomen; as they came up to nudge against his lips once more. He turned his head away from the bitterness, from the press of crumbs of wax. Yet with a hum of displeasure Annatar's other hand fastened to his cheeks, wrenching his head back, and fingers crushed until his lips parted minutely around an exhalation of pain; he tasted himself, and Annatar too, when the Maia rammed his fingers inside his mouth.

"That's it," Annatar crooned, and something in his murmur, some dreadful miasma of decadence, made Celebrimbor shudder. "You have been taught to clean up your mess, I trust?"

The elf's lips were pried open once more, and as pleasure at last leached from him, he coldly contemplated a well-placed snap of teeth; if Annatar expected him to _lick_ at the vile offering, to play the obedient little cur, then he was sorely mistaken. But Annatar withdrew before his purpose could be brought to bear: he freed him and returned to his packing with an almost disappointed sigh.

Celebrimbor spat out the film of seed and wax adhering to his tongue. A grimace of disgust was gnarled across his features, and to that he clung long after the taste had all but faded; he clung to it through the sudden wash of weariness threatening to drown him, through the odd prickle at the corners of his eyes.

He did not know when he had fallen asleep. Or whether it had been sleep at all or some queer viscosity of charnel madness. Dead bodies. Blood. The city upon its knees. When he finally made his groggy way back into wakefulness, he told himself he should cut the drama short. There was no need for histrionics. Annatar would return. _Annatar would return._

He did not know whether Annatar had slept there that night. The bed was cold in the shimmering blue of dawn. Cold and empty save for the red specks of wax. With distaste, a curl of the nose, he perceived his state—the dried seed sticking to his chest, the bleeding star sloughing off his skin—and sullenly he stalked his way back to his own chambers and the tender hope of a bath.


End file.
